Finally, his molten gaze bore into her, lingering over her mouth. “Surrender?” he asked and she shook her head.
“No ‘surrender’. Comfort. Care. Friendship.”
Deep satisfaction glinting in his eyes, he rubbed his nose against hers. “Seduce?”
“No seduce. Cajole. Kiss. Need.”
He rubbed his mouth over hers, and she moaned. “I think I’m getting the gist of it, habeebti,” he whispered against her mouth.
Holding on to him because she was afraid she was melting on the inside, Lauren spoke against those soft yet thoroughly masculine lips. Evening stubble rasped her flesh, making her whimper with want. “Yeah? Try it then.”
“Marriage. Commitment. Forever.”
Just as he stole her breath with his words, so did his hot, hungry mouth on hers.
Resistance, imagined or real, was an alien concept. She might have squeaked at the influx of such delirious pleasure and he took that opportunity to swirl his wicked tongue around hers.
Her heart was still racing from the promise in his words, her belly tightening with such fierce feeling she thought she might burst with it.
Every time she thought she had a measure of him, he went and toppled her all over again. Made her need him on such a visceral level that she came undone by his words, his smile, his touch. Joy made her want that much hotter, bone-deep affection made her need that much deeper.
She had never felt such heights of dizzying joy or such a deep hollow ache as she did with this man.
Moaning in the back of her throat, she clasped his neck and clung to him by her mouth.
Until he pulled her hands off his neck, and whispered, “Only one more week, habeebti.” Fire gleamed in his hungry gaze, his breath a harsh rhythm in her ears. “And if you get upset again because you didn’t listen to me, I will put your mother in jail.”
She sputtered and he pressed another hard, hasty kiss to her stinging lips. And then he was gone.
* * *
“Marriage. Commitment. Forever.”
She had seen him only that once in the exhausting week and Lauren clutched those three words to her every time she felt as though she was sinking in the spotlight leading up to her fairy-tale, fantastic wedding that had Behraat and the rest of the world take notice of her.
She had never imagined her wedding day, having had only one disastrous relationship by twenty-six, much less on such a huge scale, and as the days blended into a flurry of activity, Lauren felt scared, isolated, inadequate and craving Zafir’s company once again.
The palace staff in an upheaval over the upcoming wedding, even Farrah had kept their daily appointments to a minimum.
Exotic flowers and exquisite silks, diamond jewelry and designer dresses, there was no end to the treasures Zafir bestowed upon her.
And in addition to the army of staff that catered to her every breath, she also now had a secretary whose job was to school her in everything social—mostly at what state ceremonies she could open her mouth and at what, which was 90 percent, she had to look poised and beautiful and ornamental for the sheikh.
“I will train you in our ways,” he had told her arrogantly. And through those two weeks, she would have even taken his arrogant, imperious behavior if it meant she got to see more of him.
Abdul, her newly appointed secretary, she realized within two days, was adept at manipulating the truth to suit Behraat best. He had coached her intensively for an interview, the only one required of her, with a female journalist of a huge media channel. But when Lauren had sat down to watch it, her jaw had fallen to her chest.
The bits and pieces of responses that Abdul had fed her had been manipulated into a cohesive whole that told how Zafir and she had fallen in love with each other while he had been in exile, waiting to serve his country, how she had come in search of him thinking him dead, and how having found her again, the sheikh hadn’t been able to wait to make her his sheikha.
It told of how a plain, hardworking nurse from Brooklyn, New York, had befriended their sheikh, fallen in love with him and now, had been transformed into the sheikha fit for him and his great country.
Lauren hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry or take offense at being described as some kind of mouse who had unwittingly befriended a lion, and subsequently, transformed into an elegant deer?
Because levelheaded as she’d always been, even having been exposed to her parents’ glittering, high-society life at an early age and turned her back on it, her wedding and all it ensued was on such a grand level that even her head could turn.
Could buy into the fantastical love story that the palace whispered it to be around her. Could delude herself that Zafir was marrying her because he couldn’t bear to part with her rather than because it was the best thing for the situation they found themselves in.